Skeletal' Models Create Furor Over British Vogue

Published: June 3, 1996

Correction Appended

(Page 2 of 2)

"These girls, especially at adolescence, are watching women and they are watching the culture's fascination with models," said Marie Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, which has been supporting research and programs involving girls and their body images for years.

Ms. Wilson said that a new study, done by the foundation with Seventeen magazine, of 500 young men and women between the ages of 13 and 21 turned up the intriguing finding that 5 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys said they judged others on appearance but that 30 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys believed others judged them by appearance.

"One-third of girls said that weight is something they worry about, compared to 17 percent of boys," she said.

Susie Orbach, a therapist who specializes in treating eating disorders and the author of "Fat is a Feminist Issue" and of "Hunger Strike," recalled that the first modern model who was shockingly thin was the British Twiggy, in the Swinging London of the 1960's. "The difference was she gave off the appearance of being happy -- she was a working-class girl breaking into the upper-class esthetic of being so rich you don't eat.

"Today it's more sinister. It's about the confusion of femininity, and who women are, and the conjunction of women insisting they can be taken seriously in the world, and the resistance to that which says, 'You can go as far as you like, baby, but you'll still feel insecure about your bodies.' "

In the June issue, Miss Goff was photographed lounging around and running across a beach in a spread on action wear. In one photograph on the Contents page, as she gazes at the camera with a towel around her neck and with a bare midriff, she looks especially gaunt.

The layout with Miss Morton is in keeping with a new fashion trend here, described by one newspaper as the "skimpy, thrown-together, post-Trainspotting junkie look." "Train Spotting" is a new British film about the lives of drug addicts in England's bleak north.

After the British press picked up the story Friday, various groups rushed to support Omega's stand. "We're pleased that this has happened and by the reaction to it," said Joanna Vincent, head of the Eating Disorders Association, a charity counseling organization here. "We've been saying for a long time that the use of these kind of models promotes anorexia and bulimia. I find if difficult to know what's in the minds of these fashion advertisers when they choose them."

Nothing but fashion goes through their minds, said the models' agents.

"This controversy is ridiculous," said Corinne Nicolas of Elite Model Management, the agent for the 19-year-old Trish Goff. "The girl looks no different. She eats well, and in her entire career she has looked the same.

"If you look right now at all the magazines, the trend is for thin girls. That's what's selling. There was a time when the girls were voluptuous. But today a girl who is busty and voluptuous won't sell. The advertisers are the ones who decide. They hire our talent."

David Bonnouvrier, Miss Morton's agent at DNA Model Management, said he was "amused" by the furor. "Anyone who knows Annie knows she's the most normal person you could meet. She drinks beer. We go to dinner and I can tell you, she's not a cheap date."

He said her measurements were: 34-24-34. Asked what her weight was, he said: "I'd have to get back to you on that."

The article also referred incorrectly to a British film about drug addicts, "Trainspotting," which was mentioned in a newspaper's description of a fashion trend that uses thin models. The film is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, not in the north of England.

Photo: The Omega Watch Corporation criticized the British Vogue forusing models, like Trish Goff, who glorify "anorexic proportions," but later reversed a decision to suspend its advertising in the magazine. (The Conde Nast Publications Ltd.)

Correction: June 6, 1996, Thursday An article in Business Day on Monday, about criticism of the use of very thin models in the British edition of Vogue, misstated some findings of a study by the Ms. Foundation for Women and Seventeen magazine on teen-agers and their body images. The study found that 5 percent of the young women and 12 percent of the young men surveyed said they judged themselves by how they look; they did not say they judged others on appearance. The article also misstated the number of teen-agers surveyed. It was 1,000, not 500.